Summer Job

When the others get back it doesn't occur to anyone that Jack slept over anywhere, or that he had overnight company. So he doesn't mention this more ambitious way of playing house. He's sure they wouldn't understand. At least not the same way.

Jack is tortured with his emerging sexuality. He has a problem with untimely erections; at the beach he sometimes has to lie face down on the sand for inordinate amounts of time. He's troubled with this on the school bus as well, the movement of the bus does it to him almost every trip! And girls have noticed it at school. They were passing a note around one day about his difficulty - "Vick has a bone on!" He thought that was bad enough, but he even found himself fighting this in the choir at church! A paroxysm of embarrassment!

He decides to try to be more devout, to make a deliberate effort to return to the unquestioning faith and dedication to spiritual things that he had at the monastery in Bhutan. If only he could have some good talks with Brother Cyprios, or Brother Andre! How do monks and priests do it? How can they be celibate and forgo sexual expression, psycho-physical merging? How can they resist that pull? It fills his mind and body totally, flooding over him at the worst times, and drowns out any other feeling, any other thought or capacity for thought.